On Feb. 12, the best and brightest names in music will be attending the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, California, one of the biggest music events of the year. Continuing the tradition of live performances during the awards, musicians spanning vastly different genres will appear, including The Weeknd, Daft Punk, Adele, Demi Lovato, Chance the Rapper, Carrie Underwood, and A Tribe Called Quest.
The most surprising and unusual performance of the night will be Lady Gaga. Fresh off a bombastic Super Bowl performance, Gaga will share the stage and perform a duet with heavy metal group Metallica. Nominated for Best Rock Song with their 2016 release “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct,” Metallica has never been one to shy away from an unusual collaboration.
The band performed a series of shows at the Berkeley Community Theatre in 1999, accompanied by the San Francisco Orchestra. These shows, combining heavy metal with a classical accompaniment spawned the album “S&M,” which even today remains one of their highest charting songs.
Twelve years later, the group collaborated with legendary avant-garde rocker Lou Reed for a series of recording sessions, culminating in the release of “Lulu,” a complicated spoken word/instrumental album. Mixed critical reception and almost universal fan criticism has not dissuaded the band from further work with other artists.
During the 2014 Grammy Awards, Metallica was joined onstage by Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Together, they performed “One,” a complex mix of heavy thrash riffs, acoustic instrumentation, and powerful storytelling from the band’s 1989 album “…And Justice for All.” Adding an extra layer of complexity to the songwriting, Metallica performed again with Lang Lang in January, during a show in Beijing.
The influence of hard rock and metal groups like Metallica shows through in Lady Gaga’s work. In an interview with CF Fashion magazine, Gaga stated, “Some people really don’t know the importance of metal, and the scope of it. Those guys were filling stadiums, and they still are. And it’s because of the culture of the music; the poetry that’s so powerful, that whenever the fans come together, they unite in the essence of what Iron Maiden is all about. I always used to say to people, when they would say, ‘Oh, she’s the next Madonna.’ No, I’m the next Iron Maiden.”
Lady Gaga is among the best-selling recording artists of all time, winning multiple Grammy Awards, and an unprecedented twelve Guinness World Records.
The 59th Annual Grammy Awards will air this Sunday night, on Feb. 12, from 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. EST on the CBS network, and will be hosted by actor-comedian James Corden.